5 Things You Didn't Know: The Great Depression

The U.S. Constitution established three branches of the federal government: the Executive (the president), the Legislative (congress) and the Judiciary (federal courts). Nowhere in the presidential job description does it expressly permit — or prohibit — the office to draft legislation. Instead, he may sign it into law or veto it. Whatever the case, he is only supposed to see to it that those laws are “faithfully executed." Up until Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first term in 1932, these divisions were fairly clear-cut.

FDR was elected into office when the country was at its worst. He ran on the promise of a “new deal,” and on election he called a special Congressional session and drastically redefined — or lawlessly expanded, depending on your take — the role of the president by introducing a mountain of legislation aimed at economic recovery.

4- $33 million vanished every minute

Following a Thursday afternoon of panicked selling on the stock exchange, Thomas Lamont, the acting head of JP Morgan & Co., called a hasty meeting of the nation’s banking leaders and emerged with a plan to stem the tide: send Exchange president Richard Whitney onto the floor to spend money on stocks, and lots of it — as much as $30 million in less than an hour. The day that came to be known as "Black Thursday" enjoyed a brief recovery. Ironically, at the Hotel Pennsylvania that night, musicians debuted a little tune called “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

But not for long. During the first five hours of trading on the following Tuesday, $33 million in market value disappeared every minute, totaling an astonishing $10 billion — something approaching $95 billion in today’s dollars.

5- Escapist industries flourished

What do you do when you’re unemployed and can barely spare to spend a dime? Cash in that dime on a brief respite from reality — and that’s precisely what many did during the Great Depression.

As a consequence, the last thing you didn’t know about the Great Depression was that escapist industries flourished. Many people already owned automobiles, making a lazy drive to nowhere as appealing as anything, pumping money into the fuel industry. Movies became popular too, which even by today’s dollars were an extremely cheap date. And If you’ve ever smoked, you know that smoking a cigarette feels like an activity, especially when you have nothing else to do; no surprise then that, beginning in 1933, cigarette smoking began a 20-year run in which it rose in popularity every year.